Sex and Age Differences in Preschool Children's Cooperative Behavior: Partial Support for the Knight/Kagan Hypothesis

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Abstract
Although research has traditionally suggested that girls are more cooperative than boys and that younger children are less competitive than older children, Knight and Kagan and others have suggested that individualism is a critical variable in regard to sex and age differences that is often confounded with cooperation and competition. To test this hypothesis, two measures of cooperative behavior were administered to 30 4- and 5-yr.-old children. When interpreted dichotomously (cooperative vs competitive), the results support traditional findings: girls were more cooperative than boys on one measure while younger children were more cooperative than older children on both measures. When interpreted trichotomously (cooperative/individualistic/competitive) partial support emerged for the view that girls are more individualistic than boys.